<p>I have found surprisingly little information on the topic of how rigorous the academics are at Pomona. As an Economics major, will I legitimately be expecting 8-10 hours out of class, per class, per week? Or is the actual number much lower? I plan on taking advantage of a lot of extracurricular opportunities (research, internships, work/study, sports), and I'm worried that I will be overwhelmed. I'm mostly referring to the amount of out-of-class work like homework and studying, not necessarily the difficulty of the class itself. Also, is the Economics major at CMC significantly more challenging than it's Pomona counterpart?</p>
<p>In general, freshman year tends to be a little less rigorous than other years at Pomona because they want you to have ample time to explore. </p>
<p>For econ in particular, the intro economics classes aren’t very challenging at Pomona. No more than 2 or 3 hours a week. Upper level economics classes are quite challenging usually, with long homework sets that take 10-15 hours to complete. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, Pomona students find with a good work ethic sufficient time for the extracurricular activities they are really passionate about. But the work does require a serious amount of time for most classes and you probably will have to make some sacrifices somewhere.</p>
<p>The focus on economics at both schools is different- Pomona is very very theoretical, and CMC is a little more balanced in terms of practicality. The theoretical approach is not something that works for everyone and might be a little more challenging. Do you want a flexible economics major, or do you want one that prepares you extremely well for graduate school?</p>
<p>I want to be well prepared for an MBA and/or immediate employment in a financial/corporate field right out of college. I have gotten the impression that Pomona does incredibly well in both of these options. I will probably end up going to Pomona because I just like it better as a school (and they have recruited me for track), and take a bunch of Finance classes over at CMC. In general, is it pretty easy to get a job in a financial or corporate field out of Pomona? I get the impression that it definitely is. </p>
<p>I’m not sure how much this would help, but my interviewer, who is a Pomona alumna (I think she was an economics major), said that during the semesters, her workload was rigorous enough that she wasn’t able to do any extracurriculars in terms of work experience. She recommended that students focus on the academics during the school year and intern or research during the winter or summer breaks, or choose to get into more extracurriculars in the senior year. It also depends on how convenient it is for you to get off campus. To my knowledge, she didn’t have a car during her college years so that might’ve made it difficult to work/intern off campus. </p>